


hold me to the light, let me shine

by timeladyleo



Series: baptisms [1]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 03:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20668448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeladyleo/pseuds/timeladyleo
Summary: Arthur Shappey and the art of yellow car escapism.





	hold me to the light, let me shine

**Author's Note:**

> This is in no way an original idea of mine, but nevertheless it wouldn't settle until I let it out of my head, so I hope you enjoy! Title is a lyric from the Radical Face song _Baptisms_, which I fully guarantee will make you think about Arthur and want to cry.

He pressed his nose into the glass. It took concentration at this time of day to see the colours of the cars properly. It wasn’t quite dark, but the light wasn’t quite there any more either, that limbo of evening where the only colours are purple and the sodium orange of streetlights.

Red. Blue. Blue. Blue.

Why were so many of them blue today? His forehead touched the glass as he squinted out. Blue wasn’t the usual colour, not as usual as red or silver anyway. Maybe the blueness of the day had snuck out of the sky and seeped into all the paint in the world. Blue again!

He imagined that for a moment, everything in the blues that the sky could be. He liked the deep morning blues the best, when it was still, when it was quiet, when, if you stuck your head out of the window it could feel like you were the only person on Earth. It was peaceful then, and he liked it when there were no clouds, just the blue and the hint of the sun on the horizon, and the birds waking up and croaking as they warmed up their singing voices. 

Silver. Blue. Red. 

He got told off for those sorts of imaginings if he said them out loud. Green. He tried to keep them inside most of the time, but sometimes they bubbled up so strongly that if he didn’t say them it felt like his tongue was going to boil straight out of his mouth.

He tried his best to not say them to anyone but Mum, but sometimes he couldn’t help it and they just fell out of him, all the imaginings that ran wild in his brain running riot behind his teeth and escaping like prisoners, figuring out how to dig a tunnel into the real world. Black.

The streetlights caught his attention for a moment as they turned the corner, the pattern of orange and shadow, orange and shadow mesmerising him. He liked it when there was rain on the windows, how the light fractured through the drops and made patterns in the car. Red. White. He liked it when the brake lights mixed with shop neon in puddles, mixing up the light like soup, or a potion.

Sometimes he wished that magic was real, even if that was a silly thought. Magic would probably make a lot of things easier. Silver. If he had magic right now, he’d turn the radio on just so they could listen to anything except the miserable silence that filled the car like it was seeping out of all the vents. White. He wished they’d talk to each other. He wished they’d never speak again.

Speaking usually meant arguing, and if he were magic he’d put an end to that for definite.

Mum was looking out the window too and he wondered if she was watching the cars like him. He doubted it somehow. He imagined that she was anyway just to ignore the fact that she was probably looking out to avoid looking at Dad.

Dad wasn’t happy. He never was after parents evening. If he went at all.

Arthur wondered if it made him bad if he wished that Dad never went to parents evening ever again. If only parents evening never happened again. Red. It just made everything bad.

Silver. Red. Van. That didn’t count.

Neither did his grades, Mum said. Dad disagreed. Dad usually did. Arthur thought he was trying his best at school even if that wasn’t very good, but he didn’t say anything at all. Saying things never helped.

White. Blue. Yellow-! No, white, sneaky under the streetlights. Why did they not pick any other colours for cars? Or could you pick any colour at all but most people tried to be the same as everyone else and so liked to pick the boring colours? He would have a rainbow car, or maybe bright orange, or tiger stripes! Why not?

He was different already, so what difference did having a fun car have?

Finally! Yellow! He said the words without volume, the only proof that he’d opened his mouth at all in the steam that lingered on the window. It was cold outside. It was dark. He wanted to draw a smiley face into the steam but he didn’t dare move. He tried to pretend he was stiller than a statue. 

If he pressed his face even harder into the glass, maybe he wouldn’t be able to hear them any more. He imagined he was the glass, taking in all the lights and scattering them back out into the world to bounce off windows and puddles. He imagined he was a tree, or a car, or anything as long as it wasn’t here, in this car, listening. Red. Red. Red.

If he focussed on the cars hard enough, maybe it would all fade away. He wished he could make it fade away. He heard tears in Mum’s voice and knew it was his fault.

He wished he could be better.

He wished spotting yellow cars got you A’s and jobs and success. He wished he could take an exam in being kind.

A plane zoomed overhead, a flashing speck in the night. It was brighter than all the stars. Only one or two weren’t scared away by the bright town. He stared up at the plane and imagined really hard that he was it, or on it at least, maybe a businessman on his way to a big and important conference in America! Dad had flown to America, once. Arthur had begged to be allowed in the plane, dreaming about flying all over the world. Flying away.

He watched the flashing lights get eaten by a cloud, and loudly in his head said ‘One day. Maybe one day I’ll fly away.’

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [sircarolyn](http://sircarolyn.tumblr.com), on tumblr, come say hi!


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